Book picks similar to
Adrift on the Open Veld: The Anglo-Boer War and Its Aftermath 1899-1943; The Deneys Reitz Trilogy by Deneys Reitz
history
non-fiction
biography
south-africa
Diver
Tony Groom - 2008
'Diver' is an honest, moving and sometimes hilarious account of a hair-raisingly exciting career, both in the Royal Navy and in commercial deep-sea diving-training.
Breaking Through: A Memoir
Isher Judge Ahluwalia - 2020
Born into a family with eleven children and limited means, where she was one of the first to attend university, she takes us through her journey to Presidency College, Delhi School of Economics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.She chronicles her career as a young policy economist fighting against the Indian economic orthodoxy that underpinned the license-permit-quota Raj, as an institution builder leading the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), one of India’s leading economic think tanks for over a decade, and also her most recent role in focusing attention on the challenges of urbanization in India.Narrated with candor and from the heart, this is also a story of a woman balancing career and family, and trying to stay close to her roots as her life path takes her through the power corridors of New Delhi, both through her own career, and through a 50-year-marriage to Montek Singh Ahluwalia. An outsider to Delhi, who ultimately became the consummate insider, Breaking Through is an account of a remarkable life that was witness to remarkable times.
Left for Dead in the Outback: How I Survived 71 Days Lost in a Desert Hell
Ricky Megee - 2008
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
Roméo Dallaire - 2003
Digging deep into shattering memories, Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naïveté, racism & international politics. His message is simple, undeniable: Never again. When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire was called to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in '93, he thought he was heading off on a straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned & suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes readers with him on a return voyage into hell, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings. Woven thru the story of this disastrous mission is his own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, hope & reconciliation. This book is a personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth & secure in his assumptions to one conscious of his own weaknesses & failures & critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to him & his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into dirty wars.
Subaltern on the Somme
Max Plowman - 1927
Subaltern on the Somme is a record of his daily life, and ranges across different aspects of his war in the trenches - including fear, shellfire, drunkenness, mud, frustration and his views about his fellow officers and British army commanders. Subaltern on the Somme is for anybody who wonders what trench warfare was like for a junior officer.
War Story
Jim Morris - 1979
Col. Robert K. Brown, Editor and Publisher, Soldier of Fortune“Morris captures the historical accuracy of Special Operations in the language learned from firsthand experience.”–Lt. Col. Chuck Allen, Commander, Project Delta“War Story is the lore of Special Forces in Vietnam told in the tradition of Woody Guthrie.”–Al Santoli, author of Everything We Had“Jim Morris is a highly decorated Green Beret combat veteran, with a unique talent for making his readers feel a part of his gripping, action-packed personal experiences. Morris commands your attention as a reader with the same authority and ability with which he commanded troops in combat.”–J.C. Pollock, author of Mission M.I.A.Jim Morris was an educated young man who had always wanted to be a soldier. In 1963, he found the perfect war..."The war was like a great puzzle, great to think about, great to plan, great to do. It was so incredibly peaceful out there in the jungle."As an advisor to a Montagnard strike force, Morris and his guerrillas outfought and outmaneuvered the Viet Cong in his sector. To a Green Beret like Jim Morris, the “Yards” were brothers—so fiercely insular, they would serve no outsider and made the Berets who fought with them honorary members of the tribe…so valiant, they would follow the right man into a firestorm…But while he loved the ambushes, the firefights and the Montagnards, he could see a tragedy unfolding in Vietnam."As I jumped I heard a crack and felt a thud in my right shoulder. I squeezed the trigger on my M-16. The bolt went ka-schlugg and that was that, baby. Jammed again."In the most widely admired Special Forces memoir to come out of the Vietnam War, Jim Morris tells his story: of the early days and the Tet Offensive in '68, of the slaughters and the beauty, of the violence, the courage, the loyalty and the loss..."The war was my life and I identified with it totally. To end it was to end me, and that I would not do..."About the AuthorJim Morris served three tours with Special Forces (The Green Berets) in Vietnam. The second and third were cut short by serious wounds. He retired from his wounds as a major. He has maintained his interest in the mountain peoples of Vietnam with whom he fought, and has been, for many years, a civil rights activist on their behalf. His Vietnam memoir War Story won the first Bernal Diaz Award for military nonfiction. Morris is author of the story from which the film Operation Dumbo Drop was made, and has produced numerous documentary television episodes about the Vietnam War. He is author of three books of nonfiction and four novels.
No Moon Tonight
Don Charlwood - 1956
Accepted as a RAF navigator in 1940, he was posted to 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds in the winter of 1942. There he crewed up with a pilot from Western Australia and a British crew to fly a Lancaster bomber. In No Moon Tonight he gives a profound insight into the inner lives of the men of Bomber Command and their hopes and fears in the face of mounting losses. He depicts the appalling human cost of the air war in an account which has been favorably compared to other enduring memoirs of the 1st World War, namely Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. A memorable first hand account of the air war over Germany.
Operation Certain Death
Damien Lewis - 2005
The West Side Boys were a strange-looking bunch, wearing pink shades, shower caps, fluorescent wigs and voodoo charms they believed made them invulnerable to bullets - an impression re-enforced by ganja, heroine, crack cocaine and gallons of sweet palm wine. In 1999 a twelve man patrol of Royal Irish Rangers, who were training government troops in Sierra Leone, were captured and held hostage by the West Side Boys. They were held prisoner in a fortified jungle hideaway, with severed heads decorating the palisades, defended by some 400 heavily armed soldiers. Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued - over 150 of the enemy were killed. Operation Certain Death is a thrilling true story of all out war. No hostages taken. Blood-letting on a vast scale inflicted on a very blood-thirsty enemy. A gripping piece of true military history, perfect for fans of action adventure stories and anyone interested in the top secret division of the British Army.
The End of Major Combat Operations
Nick McDonell - 2010
Traveling to Baghdad and then to Mosul with the 1st Cavalry Division, McDonell offers an unforgettable look at the way things stand now—at the translators stranded in a country that doesn’t look kindly on their cooperation, at the infantrymen struggling to make something out of the soft counterinsurgency missions they call chai-ops, at the commanders inured to American journalists and Iraqi officials both—and what the so-called “end of major combat operations” means for where they’re going.
Bush War Operator: Memoirs of the Rhodesian Light Infantry, Selous Scouts and beyond
Andrew Balaam - 2014
Anyone living in Rhodesia during the 1960s and 1970s would have had a father, husband, brother or son called up in the defense of the war-torn, landlocked little country. A few of these brave men would have been members of the elite and secretive unit that struck terror into the hearts of the ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas infiltrating the country at that time - the Selous Scouts. These men were highly trained and disciplined, with skills to rival the SAS, Navy Seals and the US Marines, although their dress and appearance were wildly unconventional: civilian clothing with blackened, hairy faces to resemble the very people they were fighting against. Twice decorated - with the Member of the Legion of Merit (MLM) and the Military Forces' Commendation (MFC) - Andrew Balaam was a member of the Rhodesian Light Infantry and later the Selous Scouts, for a period spanning twelve years. This is his honest and insightful account of his time as a pseudo operator. His story is brutally truthful, frightening, sometimes humorous and often sad. In later years, after Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, he was involved with a number of other former Selous Scouts in the attempted coups in the Ciskei, a South African homeland, and Lesotho, an independent nation, whose only crimes were supporting the African National Congress. Training terrorists, or as they preferred to be called, 'liberation armies', to conduct a war of terror on innocent civilians, was the very thing he had spent the last ten years in Rhodesia fighting against. This is the true, untold story of these failed attempts at governmental overthrows.
Ours to Hold It High: The History of the 77th Infantry Division in World War II
Max Myers - 2002
The soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division saw some of the bloodiest action of the Second World War. Ours to Hold It High is brilliant history of the division’s actions through the course of World War Two as it island-hopped its way towards victory in the face of ferocious Japanese resistance. The story begins in America in 1942 when the division was re-activated and the units were formed and given training before they sailed west to fight. Part one of the book covers these initial two years and the various forms of rigorous training that the men went through to prepare them for the amphibious warfare that they would meet in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Parts two, three, four, and five of the book provides brilliant insight into the combat history of the unit from Guam to Okinawa. The actions of each unit of the division are uncovered to give a thorough overview of the tumultuous and chaotic action that the men saw. This is account is not written by a historian sitting at a desk in the United States, instead it was written by the soldiers who were there on the frontlines. Max Myers, the unit historian, has compiled their accounts to form this fascinating book. The actions of the 77th have become famous throughout the globe, particularly with the assistance of films such as Hacksaw Ridge that have immortalized the division. Almost every member of the 77th contributed in one way or another to this history. The Commanding General and members of his staff, the commanders and staff members from the organizations, and many other individuals devoted some of their time to revision and correction of preliminary manuscripts. Ours to Hold It High was initially published in 1947 and Max Myers, the main editor, passed away in 2011.
Faisal
Rebecca Stefoff - 1989
A biography of the Saudi Arabian king who ruled from 1964 until his assassination in 1975 and who became, during his reign, an important world leader through his control of his country's vast oil resources.
Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music
Phil Ramone - 2007
Streisand. Dylan. Pavarotti. McCartney. Sting. Madonna. What do these musicians have in common besides their super-stardom? They have all worked with legendary music producer Phil Ramone. For almost five decades, Phil Ramone has been a force in the music industry. He has produced records and collaborated with almost every major talent in the business. There is a craft to making records, and Phil has spent his life mastering it. For the first time ever, he shares the secrets of his trade.Making Records is a fascinating look "behind the glass" of a recording studio. From Phil's exhilarating early days recording jazz and commercial jingles at A&R, to his first studio, and eventual legendary producer status, Phil allows you to sit in on the sessions that created some of the most memorable music of the 20th century -- including Frank Sinatra's Duets album, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Ray Charles's Genius Loves Company and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. In addition to being a ringside seat for contemporary popular music history, Making Records is an unprecedented tutorial on the magic behind what music producers and engineers do. In these pages, Phil offers a rare peek inside the way music is made . . . illuminating the creative thought processes behind some of the most influential sessions in music history. This is a book about the art that is making records -- the way it began, the way it is now, and everything in between.
Get It On!: What It Means to Lead the Way
Keni Thomas - 2011
That’s all it took. I was writing a letter home to my mom when the call rang out across the American compound: 'Get it on!' And just like that, the course of my life changed forever." Decorated U.S. military veteran-turned-country musician Keni Thomas gives a personal account of his heart-wrenching experiences in the chaotic 1993 Battle of Mogadishu to express a unique set of leadership lessons and inspired view of our greater purpose. Get It On! reminds readers "that we, as individuals, do indeed matter, that we are anything but ordinary, fully capable of carrying out life-changing assignments at any level and in any situation. We can make a difference in this world."Carrying a guitar now rather than a rifle, Keni also shares stories from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry to overseas concerts for active soldiers, always passionate about the battle that "still shapes my thoughts on a daily basis" and eager to encourage the absolute best in those who are willing to answer whatever call God places on their lives.Reviews:"Keni Thomas is a great storyteller. (This) is a book for everyone."-- War on Terror News
Lipsticks, Love And Lies
Katie Price - 2013
The last three years of Katie Price's life have been some of the most dramatic and startling yet. In this dazzling instalment of her life, Katie reveals the many ups and downs from the highly publicised divorce from Alex Reid, the romance and split from Leo Penna and a whirlwind marriage and surprise pregnancy with Kieran Hayler. And that'’s just her love life. Katie has also dealt with increasingly bitter disputes with first husband Peter Andre and her former manager, as well as her public spat with comedian Frankie Boyle who made offensive comments about her disabled son Harvey. Despite her personal life being played out in the public arena, Katie remains true to her heart by always speaking her mind and living life to the full. Lipstick, Love and Lawsuits gives her side of the story, once again expressing her humour, passion and strength to her loyal fans.